25.09.12
£1.5m available for personal health budgets
More patients will get money to spend on their own care, the Department of Health has announced.
£1.5m has been identified to support the potential roll-out of personal health budgets.
The budgets will let people choose their care, with support from healthcare professionals. They will get a care plan to set out individual needs or desired health outcomes, which will detail the amount of money available to spend.
A pilot programme is underway at over 60 PCTs to identify who will benefit most from the proposals, what the money could be spent on and how best to implement personal budgets.
The pilots include patients with a range of long-term or chronic conditions, and an evaluation is due in the autumn.
Care and support minister Norman Lamb said: “We want to ensure more care is tailored around people’s individual needs and preferences. Giving those with complex health needs the control of how to spend money on their care gives them and their doctors the flexibility to try innovative new approaches to achieve better health outcomes.
“Subject to the results of the current pilot programme, our aim is to introduce a right to a personal health budget for people who would benefit from them most – the scale and pace of this will be informed by the independent evaluation.
“We want to be on the front foot as the results become known – that is why we’ve identified £1.5m to support the NHS in the first stage of the roll out as it starts to implement personal health budgets.”
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